


beloved (betrayer)

by miraphora



Category: Black Panther (2018), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Drabble, F/M, Face Slapping, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-03
Updated: 2018-05-03
Packaged: 2019-05-01 11:07:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14519184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miraphora/pseuds/miraphora
Summary: She'll keep asking the question until he understands. As long as it takes.





	beloved (betrayer)

**Author's Note:**

> From the tumblr prompt: “That’s an order. Obey.”

“Beloved,” he says, when he sees her. He greets her this way each time he sees her, as if he will remind her, as if he will sway her heart.

He doesn’t appreciate that he has only ever been a guest in her heart, that she made for him a space that fitted around her duty and her love for her King and her love for Wakanda. He loved her for her pride and for her beauty and for her strength, and yet where she is an elegant weapon, he is a blunt instrument mounted on a lumbering beast.

She straightens her neck, her shoulders, her spine, she gazes down at him from the corners of her eyes like the cut of a blade.

She judges him and finds him wanting. “Kneel.”

The stone floor is hard and his knees are ashen with neglect. His lips twist, his brows draw down, the scars twitch across his cheeks. “Beloved--”

“That’s an order. Obey.”

His lips compress, his jaw tensing. He kneels before her, tilts his head back, the shadows laying deep in the hollows of his face, his throat. His beard has thickened, obscuring the line of his jaw and his rounded chin.

She stares, cool and unyielding. Waits for him to become impatient. He can never resist the goad.

“Beloved, why do you--”

She is an elegant weapon. Her blunt nails rake along his cheek below the curve of his scars as she strikes him, cutting shallow, burning furrows in his dark skin. He twists with her blow, taking the follow-through.

“You will not betray Wakanda again. Say it.”

His first reaction is still always anger, defensive and twisted. “I betrayed nothing!”

She goes still and cool at his refutation, distant as the moon. “We’ll try again tomorrow.”

“Beloved,” he chokes, quick to anger and slower to beg.

She is already gone, her blunt nails caked with his blood curled into her fist, piercing her palm in shallow crescents.


End file.
